RED Danielson: Constellation Winds

Ray Young Bear sings of the Red Earth at the entrance to the underworld.

A detail from RED Danielson’s portrait of Meskwaki poet Ray Young Bear.

By RED Danielson

This all ends with an endless note in the wind, & Ray Young Bear, one of our greatest poets, singing bird songs on the bank of the Iowa River, where, in 1980, a UFO appeared before Ray & his wife, Stella Lasley-Young Bear, at a location Ray tells me he & other members of the Meskwaki Tribe believe to be the entrance to the underworld. Maybe this is about that: UFOs, recalling what we can hardly comprehend. Maybe it is about the essential life within each of Ray’s poems & songs. It may even be about everything in the sky & under our feet, or about the rifle Ray emptied into the UFO hoping to take him & Stella into its gleaming metamorphosis of light, hovering only 60 feet above their heads in the dark sky 43 autumns ago.

Let me get you there.

I only want for you to be with me as my voice intertwines with your own, reading on to the next word, the next, the next. & which of the two is in your mind this …